The sight of Baby Kochamma made them suddenly sober. The moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts spread its wings over both their hearts. Why had she come? Where was Ammu? Was she still locked up?

Baby Kochamma looked at them sternly. She said nothing for a long time. When she spoke her voice was hoarse and unfamiliar.

“Whose boat was it? Where did you get it from?”

“Ours. That we found. Velutha mended it for us,” Rahel whispered.

“How long have you had it?”

“We found it the day Sophie Mol came.”“And you stole things from the house and took them across the river in it?”

“We were only playing…”

“Playing? Is that what you call it?

Baby Kochamma looked at them for a long time before she spoke again.

“Your lovely little cousin’s body is lying in the drawing room. The fish have eaten out her eyes. Her mother can’t stop crying. Is that what you call playing?”

A sudden breeze made the flowered window curtain billow. Outside Rahel could see jeeps parked. And walking people. A man was trying to start his motorcycle. Each time he jumped on the kickstarter lever, his helmet slipped to one side.

Inside the Inspector’s room, Pappachi’s Moth was on the move.

“It’s a terrible thing to take a person’s life,” Baby Kochamma said. “It’s the worst thing that anyone can ever do. Even God doesn’t forgive that. You know that, don’t you?”

Two heads nodded twice.

“And yet”-she looked sadly at them-”you did it.” She looked them in the eye. “You are murderers.” She waited for this to sink in.

“You know that I know that it wasn’t an accident. I know how jealous of her you were. And if the judge asks me in court I’ll have to tell him, won’t I? I can’t tell a lie, can I?” She patted the chair next to her “Here, come and sit down-”

Four cheeks of two obedient bottoms squeezed into it.

“I’ll have to tell them how it was strictly against the Rules for you to go alone to the river. How you forced her to go with you although you knew that she couldn’t swim. How you pushed her out of the boat in the middle of the river. It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

Four saucers stared back at her. Fascinated by the story she was telling them. Then what happened?

“So now you’ll have to go to jail,” Baby Kochamma said kindly. “And your mother will go to jail because of you. Would you like that?”

Frightened eyes and a fountain looked back at her

“Three of you in three different jails. Do you know what jails in India are like?”

Too heads shook twice.

Baby Kochamma built up her case. She drew (from her imagination) vivid pictures of prison life. The cockroach-crisp food. Thechhi-chhi piled in the toilets like soft brown mountains. The bedbugs. The beatings. She dwelled on the long years Ammu would be put away because of them. How she would be an old, sick woman with lice in her hair when she came out-if she didn’t die in jail, that was. Systematically, in her kind, concerned voice she conjured up the macabre future in store for them. When she had stamped our every ray of hope, destroyed their lives completely, like a fairy godmother she presented them with a solution. God would never forgive them for what they had done, but here on Earth there was a way of undoing some of the damage. Of saving their mother from humiliation and suffering on their account. Provided they were prepared to be practical.

“Luckily,” Baby Kochamma said, “luckily for you, the police have made a mistake. A lucky mistake.” She paused. “You know what it is, don’t you?”

There were people trapped in the glass paperweight on the policeman’s desk. Estha could see them. A waltzing man and a waltzing woman. She wore a white dress with legs underneath.

“Don’t you?”

There was paperweight waltz music. Mammachi was playing it on her violin.

Ra-ra-ra-ro-rum

Parum-parum.

“The thing is,” Baby Kochamma’s voice was saying, “what’s done s done. The inspector says he’s going to die anyway. So it won’t really matter to him what the police think. What matters is whether you want to go to jail and make Ammu go to jail because of you. It’s up to you to decide that.”

There were bubbles inside the paperweight which made the man and woman look as though they were waltzing underwater. They looked happy. Maybe they were getting married. She in her white dress. He in his black suit and bow tie. They were looking deep into each other’s eyes.

“If you want to save her, all you have to do is to go with the Uncle with the big meeshas. He’ll ask you a question. One question. All you have to do is to say `Yes.’ Then we can all go home. It’s so easy. It’s a small price to pay.”

Baby Kochamma followed Estha’s gaze. It was all she could do to prevent herself from taking the paperweight and flinging it out of the window. Her heart was hammering.

“So!” she said, with a bright, brittle smile, the strain beginning to tell in her voice. “What shall I tell the Inspector Uncle? What have we decided? D’you want to save Arnmu or shall we send her to jail?”

As though she was offering them a choice of two treats. Fishing or bathing the pigs? Bathing the pigs or fishing?

The twins looked up at her. Not together (but almost) two frightened voices whispered, “Save Ammu.”

In the years to come they would replay this scene in their heads. As children. As teenagers. As adults. Had they been deceived into doing what they did? Had they been tricked into condemnation?

In a way, yes. But it wasn’t as simple as that. They both knew that they had been given a choice. And how quick they had been in the choosing! They hadn’t given it more than a second of thought before they looked up and said (not together, but almost) “Save Ammu.” Save us. Save our mother.

Baby Kochamma beamed. Relief worked like a laxative. She needed to go to the bathroom. Urgently. She opened the door and asked for the Inspector.

“They’re good little children,” she told him when he came. “They’ll go with you.”

“No need for both. One will serve the purpose,” Inspector Thomas Mathew said. “Any one. Mon. Mol. Who wants to come with me?”

“Estha.” Baby Kochamma chose. Knowing him to be the more practical of the two. The more tractable. The more farsighted. The more responsible. “You go. Goodboy.”

Little Man. He lived in a cara-van. Dum dum.

Estha went.

Ambassador E. Pelvis. With saucer-eyes and a spoiled puff. A short ambassador flanked by tall policemen, on a terrible mission deep into the bowels of the Kottayam police station. Their footsteps echoing on the flagstone floor.

Rahel remained behind in the Inspector’s office and listened to the rude sounds of Baby Kochamma’s relief dribbling down the sides of the Inspector’s pot in his attached toilet.

“The flush doesn’t work,” she said when she came out “It’s so annoying.”

Embarrassed that the Inspector would see the color and consistency of her stool.

The lock-up was pitch-dark. Estha could see nothing, but he could hear the sound of rasping, labored breathing. The smell of shit made him retch. Someone switched on the light. Bright Blinding. Velutha appeared on the scummy, slippery floor: A mangled genie invoked by a modern lamp. He was naked, his soiled mundu had come undone. Blood spilled from his skull like a secret. His face was swollen and his head look liked a pumpkin, too large and heavy for the slender stem it grew from. A pumpkin with a monstrous upside-down smile. Police boots stepped back from the rim of a pool of urine spreading from him, the bright, bare electric bulb reflected in it.

Dead fish floated up in Estha. One of the policemen prodded Velutha with his foot. There was no response. Inspector Thomas Mathew squatted on his haunches and raked his jeep key across the sole of Velutha’s foot. Swollen eyes opened. Wandered. Then focused through a film of blood on a beloved child. Estha imagined hat something in him smiled. Not his mouth, but some other unhurt part of him. His elbow perhaps. Or shoulder.